Last December, Friends of the Island Fox worked with The Nature Conservancy and Working Dogs 4 Conservation on a project to see if a specially trained dog could track down island spotted skunk dens and scat. (See Moose the conservation working dog)
courtesy of TNC and WD4C
In the initial project, Moose used his specially trained nose to locate 11 scat samples. Two scat samples were also found by humans. The samples were sent to the Genetics Lab at UC Davis and Friends of the Island Fox helped fund the genetic testing of the samples. How well did Moose do identifying island spotted skunk scat from island fox scat?
Moose: 9 out of the 11 scats came from island spotted skunks. 1 sample was too degraded for DNA analysis (it might have been skunk) and 1 sample was island fox scat. 90% accurate!
Humans: 1 of the 2 scats came from an island spotted skunk, the other was island fox. 50% accurate!
Obviously, Moose is better than humans at detecting island spotted skunk scat.
island fox scat
The next questions:
- Is there enough quality DNA in a scat sample to determine the identity of an individual island spotted skunk?
- It would cost $7,000 to develop island spotted skunk genetic markers to determine individuals. Can enough scat be located to establish a population estimate and would it be fiscally feasible to count the population this way?
The other information obtained from the scat samples pertains to diet. Island spotted skunk scat was compared with island fox scat. Stay tuned for more on metabarcoding.
